Surviving without Modern Medicine
 

If modern medicine were to disappear tomorrow, how badly would you personally be affected? By modern medicine I mean antibiotics, stents, laser surgery, blood pressure meds, anti-depressants, synthetic insulin, etc, etc. Basically turning the clock back 100 years

I'd be dead before the week was over.

The way things are, many people already are facing that reality. The drugs are there, they just can't afford them. Have you ever been laid off and lost your health insurance? Yes COBRA benefits are available, but how many people can afford many hundreds of dollars a month after losing their job?

Everyday many people have to make that decision. Pay their bills or buy their prescriptions.

Back 100 years, meaning we could smoke weed in public? ;)

I am........for the past 25 years, so is my entire family, we all depend on nature cure with Ayurveda and Homeopathy. I was diagnosed with Diabetes Mellitus at 30 and since then I have been on natural meds with no insulin. At 43 I still don't need any glasses and my kidneys test at 100%.

Considering the frequency with which I go to doctors, it would probably be a few years before I noticed.

I'd be just fine, about the only thing I take is Zyrtec, and Asprin. Just during allergy season I would feel horrible alot...

You used modern medicine to test your Kidneys and thats against the rules!

Other than the occasional analgesic, I don't take any meds, so I ought to be able to continue being a p i t a for a good while longer.

Depends on how you define 'survive.'

I've actually got my Enbrel syringe sitting on my keyboard, warming to room temp so that it doesn't hurt like a sum***** when I inject it. Getting that in tonight means tomorrow I take my methotrexate.

Just swallowed my twice-daily dose of loritadine.

This morning, I coated my face, neck, and arms with sunscreen.

If I had to give up my Enbrel and methotrexate, my mobility would be dramatically reduced. This I know, because any time I get an infection, I have to go off these drugs until the infection is cleared. If I'm off this cocktail for more than a couple weeks, I start reverting to painful existence I had for 20+ years before finding these drugs. In addition, off these drugs my iritis and macular edema are far more likely to flare up. Being blind sucks (went there once for a short while during a particularly bad bout of the macular edema), but being blind does not equal unable to survive.

Lose the loritadine, and I get miserable here in CT pretty much full time for ~ 4 months (severe grass allergies - pretty much anything people plant as lawn, I'm allergic to). In southern CA, this was a nuisance. Out here, it hits the point of 'Jim is useless' at times.

Sunscreen? Has become a necessity in my humble opinion. This opinion became pretty firmly planted after having 26 spots frozen off my face and shoulders. Oh - and one pre-cancerous lump removed from my nose.

So - losing my regimen of modern medicine won't cause me to drop dead tomorrow. Be miserable (fiery swords down the back of both legs with every step pretty much sucks), yeah. Drop dead sooner than I would have otherwise, most likely.

This from a guy who will never, ever forget that western doctors 'practice' medicine. Collectively, they've been at it for hundreds of years. Individually, they go to school forever, and yet they never get past the 'practicing' stage.

I'd be fine. I take a few supplements and an asprain for headaches every once in a while but I would survive... If I worked harder and ate better like people did 100 years ago, I'd be even better.

Do you have Anklyosing Spondilytis? I take Humera for it

Without modern medicine, our lives would be vastly different. Without the broad vaccination programs we have in place pesky little diseases like TB, Polio, (remember smallpox?), etc. would come back happily out of the woodwork and once again reduce our ballooning populations nicely.

Without cardiac intervention, many Western men and others around the globe would be dropping dead at 50-60 instead of 70-80+.

Same scenario for cancer, worse probably.

Viral outbreaks and epidemics would change how we live in terms of defending our families against the spread of the disease. With no way to check the spread, people would have to run from hot zones. This would likely create a scenario akin to several bad B-horror movies I can think of.

Infant birth mortality would increase, as would mortality rates for young pregnant women. Even with modern medicine and surgery, birth complications are still common. We've forgotten some of that in the face of modern C-sections and epidurals. Reversion to essentially paegan medicine would remind us nicely.

Those nasty peanut and other food allergies would probably take a back seat though, as unchecked anaphylactic shock would wipe out those affected.

Getting old wouldn't be so much of a drag as we'd all die sooner from the little things - pneumonia, infections, gangrene from brittle broken bones that haven't been set properly due to lack of x-ray/imaging technology, etc.

I won't even get into antibiotics as they really should speak for themselves.

Hmmm...maybe I'll stop here, I'm depressing myself. No meds for that either, come to think of it...:D

<--------Doesn't get headaches, no allergies, only got poison ivy once when I scratched the back of my neck with the back of a machette. Somehow i'm not even allergic to bee's like my father is. I'm rarely sick and when it happens i'm usually over it within a day or two. I've only taken medicine 3 or 4 times in my entire life (Up to and includeing the common stuff like tylenol) I wouldn't even flinch.


For those of you with seasonal allergies I'm going to recommend eating honey. However don't go to stop and shop and buy it otherwise its pointless. Only local honey will do any good so find a beekeeper close to home.

Healthy. Only recent doctor visit was in October for Strep Throat. IF and when I get to the point of needing that "blue pill" with the 4 hour side effect, and it didn't exist, they're would be a bullet behind my left ear.. :D